The long awaited Amazon Kindle is back in stock after it quickly sold out the first time, with the price tag still being $399 its hard to say will it be as popular with more competition around? Find it here.

Source: GizmoScene

We recently covered how T-Mobile Germany dropped their iPhone prices and as predicted O2 followed shortly afterwards by also lowering their iPhone prices. In a seemingly desperate attempt to clear out stocks. But why is the iPhone a total disaster in the UK?

Number 1.
Here in the UK, (Im not totally sure about other countries such as the USA) we tend to get our new phones for free when we sign up to a new contract, a ton of minutes and a ton of texts, especially for £35 ($70) a month. Maybe this is a little odd, but I guess we can shed out a bit of cash for a new piece of technology, right?

Number 2.
Restricted to O2? Or any other specific carrier in other Countries. Nobody wants restrictions, we want competition, lower prices, I dont want to change my Network and neither does anyone else. Its quite clear that Apple sold the iPhone to the largest companies around, O2 and AT&T, a smart move perhaps? Not really. By restricting networks you miss out on everyone else, they may have a smaller market share but it sure as hell adds up.

Number 3.
They havn’t done anything about it. Apple know that their sales are poor, they know that O2 are overflowing with iPhones that no one wants. Yet still Apple have made no changes to their business plan.. All we can hope is this will all change in the near future.

I can honestly say, this brings a smile to my face, knowing that even a fantastic piece of technology, that the iPhone is. Was a complete failiure. Its good to know that people are still willing to miss out on the things they want when there are restrictions in place and the price isnt right. Now Apple has no choice but to try something else with the 3G iPhone in the UK otherwise they will regret it.

Yahoo today responded to yesterday’s letter from Microsoft inviting Yahoo to join the boys up in Redmond. The letter rejects Microsoft’s offer for the web services giant unless more money is offered.

In a summary of their response Yahoo said:

We are open to all alternatives that maximize stockholder value. To be clear, this includes a transaction with Microsoft if it represents a price that fully recognizes the value of Yahoo! on a standalone basis and to Microsoft, is superior to our other alternatives, and provides certainty of value and certainty of closing. Lastly, we are steadfast in our commitment to choosing a path that maximizes stockholder value and we will not allow you or anyone else to acquire the company for anything less than its full value.

The key phrase in this summary is “includes a transaction.. if it represents a price that fully recognizes the value of Yahoo!”. So come on Microsoft, more money please..

Thats right. CHAINSAWS. I thought Cuts would be a little too light of a word to use in this case. The price of the iPhone has been dramatically reduced to €99, down from €399. This sudden price cut which sparked rumours of more confirmation that the 3G iPhone was definately coming, was infact in order to “boost sales”. This price cut has only affected the 8GB model, the 16GB model remains the same price.

As usual, customers will be strapped down and forced to sign a T-Mobile contract. Unless they are able to “hack” their iPhones like the other 1.5 million users of the popular device.

Personally we dont think that T-Mobiles plan will massively increase iPhone sales, keeping in mind that the total fee is still €960 over the 18 month contract. Although if this does lead to an increase in sales there is a chance that iPhone prices may drop closer to home, a spokeswoman from O2 (the UK Carrier for the iPhone), said that although the company has no similar plans they will monitor developments and react to customer demand. In simple terms, lots of sales with low iPhone prices in Germany means it’ll probably drop over in the UK aswell.

According to The Times today “The internet could soon be made obsolete.”, in an article published today The Times states that scientists at CERN, the world largest particle physics laboratory will enable a superfast ‘internet’ which could be available this autumn.

“The Grid” which is remensicent to the network that founded the internet half a century ago (ARPANET) - The Grid has been designed to be a network of supercomputers collaborating processing power to analyse the results of CERN research.

The Grid will ‘revolutionize’ the internet because its network is solely fibre optic and this will eliminate the slow downs in our current internet caused by copper cabling. But isn’t this network occurring already? Telecommunications networks across the globe are being upgraded to fibre optics which makes The Grid a mere example of why we need to convert all networks to fibre optics.

So in response to The Times - No, The Grid won’t make the internet obsolete, it will only drive mass upgrade of copper cable to fibre optics - and that won’t be pervasive for at least the next decade and even then there will always be weak links in the network, when you deal with a network as big as the internet, it becomes impossible to ensure uniform bandwidth.

Whether The Grid is over-hyped or not, it is certainly a necessary kick that telecommunication providers need to get their networks upgraded.

With the recent news that Walt Mossberg (An American journalist who is a close friend to Steve Jobs) has confirmed a 3G iPhone in 60 days, its becoming more and more certain that the long awaited iPhone is on its way soon.

According to BusinessWeek there appears to be a very limited supply of iPhones in the US but no shortage in Europe. Making the chance of a new iPhone 80% likely to happen soon in the US. Apple wouldn’t allow a top selling product start becoming out of stock in over 20 stores unless they have something new planned, that just wouldn’t make sense. Most people assumed that the 3G iPhone would take around a year to get out in the open, due to the lack of 3G from the original phone so 60 days seems about right to us. The original iPhone was launched in the US in June 2007, meaning that if 60 days is roughly correct the 3G iPhone should be hitting us around early June, a year after the original iPhones release.

Due to European stores being overstocked on the iPhone we can say that the new iPhone will most likely hit the US before it hits Europe (suprise suprise). Following a similar timeframe to the original iPhone, the 3G iPhone should be released in Europe around early September.

We’re certainly excited about this, especially if Kevin Rose’s iPhone Rumours are correct, we could be video chatting with our friends very soon. Now all we have to do is play the waiting game.